The Storm

A month has passed since I last wrote to you. It was a month of storms, beginning with the squall that chased me south from my residency. We moved through weeks of deep snow and heavy rain. Now it ends with a pile of rubble around my home and flooding within our walls.

I won’t burden you with too many details. After all we all have our storms to contend with. But here are a few of the highlights. An arctic blast brought ten days of confinement in our home due to heavy snow and ice. Then the warm and pounding rains came. Trees fell all along the edge of the creek. In that time the healing space in the cabin basement was filled with the three feet of water. All the power tools were inundated. New leaks sprung from our house roof. The woodstove broke. The cooking surface in our kitchen stopped heating correctly. The heat pump broke on the same day. On the first day out the truck began smoking after it limped home, stuck in first gear. Even more significant, in the family we saw the evidence deep distress in the children. There were waves of anger and screaming trances that shook our sense of safety and comfort. Old traumas raised their dead spirits over and over again in our home around winter solstice into the new year.

The storm has passed, as all storms pass. The sun shines today for the first time in a month. The damage is deep. The earth will heal. The home will be rebuilt. The lives here will be renewed. The fronts wiped out seasons of idealism and hours of work. The field is scraped clean, revealing what was behind all of these herky jerky efforts to make a perfect and safe home.

I’m happy today. The Creator comforts me through the friendships that have also welled up this month. My art group, a friend at work, my two sisters of the spirit in California, my mother in the mountain snows, the neighbors that offer help, Heather. These are worthy of praise and gratitude.

All things change. And a kernel of the original story remains after the flood and the pounding wind. I haven’t written this month because my inner critic could not produce a svelte and eloquent product. The storm wiped out all the perfection plans. What’s left is a holy mess and new space for compassionate spirits and friends to come. There is an emptiness inside me that is full of potential and life.

I’m not going to finish the basement now because a spring has decided to grace the room with its flooding wisdom. I’m not going to build the grand studio on the field’s edge. I’m just going to write at my trusted old desk. And I don’t have the answers that will fix the sad angers that have dripped into our living room. I look around and I don’t know how to proceed or what to do. And that creates a strange and even happy freedom. It’s like the great burdens of being responsible, right and even “good” were blown off my shoulders. That’s the ruthless gift of the storm. We all are defeated eventually by something bigger than us. Perhaps that defeat is the dark gift that strengthens us and brings us into a new season of life.

Now the sun shines on the standing water beside the bent and tattered trees. Looking at my world, my family, I survey the injuries to my surety. The ideals I based my life are sheared like the alder grove along the creek. All my life I’ve based a sense of self on being good, being nice, being meek, and making a vision of heaven on earth. I have striven to be the attending partner, the entertaining and hard working step parent, the spiritual listener, the visionary artist… the one so controlled.

A lovely mentor of mine has been encouraging me to meditate on the attributes of “correct action” instead of being controlled, nice and perfect. Being correct as a human in motion and in stillness. Perhaps being “correct” means being a little messier. Yes, the storm and the sun are worthy teachers. Like the holy muses they have powers beyond control. Maybe I can be more human now. Perhaps that is the other gift of the storm. Sometimes it is correct to say “What I have done is enough. What I am is enough. Let the winds come. Let the ocean fall from space. Let the dramas of others lives rush by in their howling. Let it all be.”

Today I am grateful for the cold sun and the steaming field. Today I am grateful to be imperfect and even stormy in my craft. Today is another day to say “Yes!” to the fate and blessings the Great Beloved brings.

Rick